Being Socially Awkward Is Not An Excuse

Dr. NerdLove explains that it’s not bad to be socially awkward, but it IS bad to refuse to respect people’s boundaries and use social awkwardness as an excuse.

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It’s that time of year again: convention season gets started, students go on Spring Break and we brace ourselves for a new round of stories about creepers, predators and generally shitty dating behavior. It’s Creep Week 2014: like Shark Week, except during Shark Week everyone is actually rooting for the shark. So it’s time to talk about creepy behavior, how to avoid it and what to do about it.

And today, I’m going to piss a lot of you off. I’m going to piss a lot of you off and I’m going to do it deliberately. Because today I’m going to take a whack at one of the greatest sacred cows on the Internet: the Socially Awkward Exception.

This is something I’ve seen over and overagain whenever the topic of meeting women comes up: the plight of the guys who supposedly have been mislabeled as “creepers” when in reality they’re just socially awkward and we should all be giving them a break, maaaan.

All too often, we hear that someone who’s socially awkward should get a pass because, hey, he doesn’t know that he’s doing something wrong! He’s probably really just a nice guy! Shouldn’t she be nice to him, anyway? Or maybe she should just teach him what he did was wrong.

Except… no. No, we shouldn’t. More often than not the problem isn’t about being socially awkward, it’s about pushing boundaries; claiming that being socially awkward – or defending someone on the grounds that they’re just awkward – means that we shouldn’t be so hard on them becomes about excusing their behavior and helping them put pressure on women to tolerate that behavior. But even when someone genuinely is socially awkward, it ultimatelydoes not matter.

Assuming you haven’t clicked away in disgust, let’s get into why social awkwardness isn’t an excuse.

“It’sssss the mosssst wonderful time of the year!”

The Socially Awkward Vs. Creepers

Being socially awkward is often held up as a defense against being labeled “creepy”; it’s another variation of “it’s only creepy if you’re ugly”, but with the vague hints of ableism or social justice for flavor. Almost everyone has been creeped out by someone out only to be told “Aw, he means well. He just doesn’t know any better,” or “Hey, he’s a nice guy! He does so much for us! He’s just a little awkward, you know?” There’s tremendous social pressure to look the other way, to “give him a second chance”.

Let’s run down just what makes someone creepy again:

Behaving in a manner that makes someone feel uncomfortable, unsafe or threatened.

Behaving in a manner that pushes against an individual’s boundaries – especially repeatedly.

That second one is incredibly important and forms a critical distinction: creepers and predators will frequently push against people’s boundaries in order to see what they can get away with. When they get caught, they’ll often claim to be “socially awkward” as a way of deflecting responsibility for their actions and – more importantly – putting pressure on their target to let them violate their boundaries with impunity. Many creepers will turn their actions around on their victim and make it seem as if they’re the one being unreasonable. “Hey, I was just paying you a compliment!” “I just wanted to talk to you!” “It was just a joke, geez, get a sense of humor.” “Man, don’t be so sensitive.”

Someone who is socially awkward, on the other hand, is someone who has issues with basic social skills. They may have acute anxiety or nervousness in social settings. They may not be used to social norms, have a hard time keeping the conversation flowing naturally, or get nervous and say the wrong thing at the worst possible time. More often than not, someone who is socially awkward has poor social calibration; they may make people uncomfortable because their behavior feels off. When someone isn’t behaving in a way that’s congruent with the social context, we get uncomfortable because they’re inadvertently signaling that something is wrong; it might be that they’re dangerous or there’s a hazard the rest of us haven’t noticed, but that “off” behavior is going to make us instinctively look for a threat.

But being anxious or socially clumsy or inexperienced isn’t the same as being creepy. Someone who is socially awkward will occasionally trip over somebody else’s boundaries by accident because they may not necessarily understand where the line is in the first place. A creeper, on the other hand, knows exactly where those boundaries are… he just doesn’t care. A socially awkward person frequently realizes that they fucked up almost as soon as the words are out of their mouth and will often freeze up or try to verbally backpedal; a creeper who is using “socially awkward” as an excuse on the other hand, will wield their supposed infraction against the other person as proof that they didn’t do anything wrong… or rely on others to do their defending for them.

In fact, we have an excellent example of this behavior. Let’s examine a recent bout of internet infamy for “awkward vs. creeper”, shall we?

“She Should Have Been Clearer”

Last month, the tale of ”FedoraBeard vs. The Hot Topic Clerk” hit the popular image sharing site Imgur and rocketed across blogs and tumblrs into Internet legend. To sum up the situation: a guy developed a crush on a clerk he saw while shopping at a Hot Topic. After getting her name from a mutual friend, he tracked her down on Facebook and proceeded to attempt to woo her… to disastrous results.

Except… she did. Notice the time-stamps. Her first response to him is on 2/16. She doesn’t say anything else until he prods her again a day later, and even then doesn’t respond until the next day, 2/18 … with a very curt and less than friendly message wanting to know how he found her. After three hours of no response he prods at her again, then yet again on 2/19.

The lack of response and engagement is what’s known as a “soft no”; a way of indicating a lack of interest without a direct refusal. This is something that men and women are very familiar with and use on a regular basis, not just in terms of sex and relationships but as a conversational norm. There is incredible social pressure for people – men and women – not to give a direct refusal or actually say “no”. Saying “no” directly is often seen as rude or needlessly hurtful and so we have a surprisingly complex system of refusing without actually saying “no”. In fact, a study from the University of The West of England and Loughborough University documents just how many ways we say “no” without saying the words. Women are especially socialized to be considerate of other people’s feelings – even at the expense of their own – and face greater pressure to offer a “soft no” rather than a direct refusal, as a way of sparing the feelings of others.

Now, often when dealing with stories about why this woman or the other didn’t “tell him no”, we will see people say that it’s impossible for a guy to realize he’s being refused because she didn’t say the magic words. In fact, returning to the story of FedoraBeard, we see this in the commentary on the blogs that reported the story – she didn’t say “go away”, therefore how could he have known he was unwelcome?

Except he specifically notes her silence and proceeds anyway. On 2/21 he comments on the fact that she hasn’t blocked him or shut down her profile, therefore she must be ok with this. In other words: he understands that her lack of response1 is an indication that she doesn’t want to talk to him but he has decided that these other signs – that she didn’t flee the Internet to get away from him – are a stronger indication that she’s OK with his tracking her down.

In other words: he knew exactly what she was saying, he just didn’t like the answer. This isn’t a case of being socially awkward and unfamiliar with social norms, it’s a case of him deciding that he’d rather choose the interpretation that favors his interests over hers. His desire to “worship” her trumps her desire to be left alone.

This is creepy behavior being excused as “socially awkward”.

“Just Give Him A Chance”

One of the undertones of the “he’s socially awkward” excuse is that he’s being misunderstood. That he’s harmless. He’s really a good guy… and this is why the woman maligning him should be willing to overlook the way he’s stepped all over her boundaries. Because he didn’t meanto.

Can you imagine why this argument isn’t going to go over well with women?

Except it doesn’t matter. All too often women have given someone the benefit of the doubt – either because they questioned their own instincts or because of social pressure – and realized that it was a mistake to do so. Having an aversion to people who trip up against their boundaries is important because predators use boundary testing to see what they can get away with. It’s how they pick their victims – looking for people who can be pressured into going along to get along, who have a harder time making a strong objection because of the possibility that “it was an honest mistake” or because the predators are skilled at using plausible deniability to convince others to persuade their target that no, he was just being friendly!

The pressure to give someone a second chance – that they were just being awkward and the woman should just relax her boundaries a little – is telling a woman that she doesn’t have a right to establish her limits or to control who she does or doesn’t talk to. It carries the message that the right of a maybe-awkward-maybe-creepy guy to talk to her is more important than her right to feel safe and secure. It means she’s not allowed to trust her instincts and instead should either magically intuit somebody’s intentions or just let the crowd override her decisions.

And this is where excusing creepy behavior as “just being awkward” gets especially insidious.

Why Socially Awkward Isn’t An Excuse

At this point, you’re probably wondering why I’m beating up on the socially awkward. I’m not. I actually have a lot of sympathy for people who get nervous dealing with others, who may be socially inexperienced, or who otherwise have problems interacting with people. In my bad old days, I used to be one of them. My life from 6th grade through… well, most of college, honestly, was one long cringe-fest of not knowing how to talk to people, saying the wrong thing at the worst time and generally flailing around making things worse. I creeped out a lot of women and when I was starting out in the pick-up scene; I creeped out even more through my awkwardness.

Let he who can’t relate to the meme throw the first stone.

Here’s the thing about the socially awkward: they don’t want to trip over people’s boundaries. You can almost always track the exact moment they realize that they’ve done something wrong by the way they desperately try to backtrack, apologize and generally try to reassure the other person that they didn’t mean to and they’re so embarrassed and are kind of freaking out and, and, and…

You know what you don’t see? You don’t see them justifying their behavior. Or turning it around and making it about the person whose boundaries they just blew past. They don’t rely on social pressure – either through making a scene or through other people justifying their actions for them – to make the other person submit to their demands. They don’t argue that the other person is obligated to forgive him, to give him a second chance or otherwise pretend that the awkwardness just didn’t happen. Creepers and predators rely on other people insisting that their social awkwardness is a mistake because it gives them cover. When the “socially awkward” exception is in play, other people are less likely to call him out on his creepy behavior .2 It becomes a way of isolating somebody from potential allies and tricking others – people who might otherwise object to his bad behavior and assist his target – into being complicit in his actions. The Awkward Excemption teaches other people to tolerate, even expect creepy behavior… and to forgive it because hey, “he means well.” It gives the creeper cover and allows him to continue being part of the community; he’s not “Johnny the creepy predator”, he’s “Johnny the decent guy, a little weird sometimes but harmless.”

It turns him from being a potential threat to a missing stair problem – something everyone knows about and dismisses, right up until someone slips and breaks their leg because they didn’t know to watch out for the missing stair.

And not only does it end up continuing the idea that being socially awkward is inherentlycreepy – and thus alienating good people who just need to work on their social skills – excusing the behavior makes it harder for the socially awkward to not be creepy by accident. See, the socially awkward want to improve. They aren’t interested in getting people to tolerate their fuck-ups, they want to not fuck up in the first place. Part of why being awkward isn’t an excuse is because, frankly, sometimes the only way you realize a line was there in the first place is because you tripped over it and landed on your face. Fucking up is part of how we learn; we know not to make the mistake again in the future and – more importantly – learn how to respond when we screw up.

Being awkward isn’t a permanent condition; it’s something you can overcome with education and practice. But getting a pass on creepy behavior doesn’t help you learn, and it’s not on other people to teach you. Being willing to own your mistakes – not to explain them away as not your fault, to make it about her failings or otherwise pretend it’s not a problem – and being able to do so with grace and sincerity is the real way you show that maybe you’re not a bad guy after all. You don’t insist that you “deserve” a second chance or the benefit of the doubt, you earn it.

About Harris O'Malley

Harris O'Malley provides geek dating advice at his blog Paging Dr. NerdLove, as well as writing the occasional guest review for Spill.com and appearing on the podcast The League of Extremely Ordinary Gentlemen. He can be found dispensing snark and advice on Facebook and Twitter (@DrNerdLove.)

That society sees it as often an excuse for bad behavior is another problem.

But that doesn’t negate THIS problem. Both exist.

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4 years ago

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Wes Carr

Expecting things from other people almost always leads to disappointment. So does seeking approval.
If you need someone else to validate your feelings or self worth, that is the problem. You don’t have to forfeit the game, just don’t play it in the first place.

This is crucial relationship information, since most people aren’t educated about boundaries and healthy ways to interact in social situations. I (along with 80 some others around the world) facilitate a workshop called Cuddle Party that focuses on saying yes to what we want and no to what we don’t want in all areas of life. That vague (soft no) response that you speak of, is one of the areas we address. Most folks don’t like hearing or saying no for fear of being hurt or hurting someone else’s feelings. Asking permission before touching and receiving a verbal yes is… Read more »

No definitely not true. If you can get past your fears it is far easier to meet decent people through clubs, sports and introductions through friends. Once women know you are just a little awkward they move past it fairly quick if they like you plus you have usually met them a few times and have common interests or friends. Women are much more paranoid about the creep factor when online.

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4 years ago

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Morgan

Loved this. The whole time I was reading I kept thinking back to guys I see in the bar, liquored up and annoying/creeping out every girl they interact with. It’s inexcusable. I think also that the loud-mouth “sarcastic” jerk, hitting on girls and demanding their approval, can be just as bad as the creeper, except the jerk puts girls on the spot and under pressure to forgive him by using insults for attention, and then saying “it was a joke, I was being sarcastic.” There’s a big difference between comedy and covert insults. I believe that us men need to… Read more »

Being socially awkward you want to know how and why you tripped up and you usually apologize. You are aware you trip over boundaries you just don’t know they are there in the first place.

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4 years ago

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Archy

We need people, women especially to find a way to inform the socially awkward in a DECENT manner about how they’ve slipped up. Maybe relaying the info through a friend. It’s not always a good idea to just drop the creep label straight away and instantly ignore them. For people that are socially awkward, a bit of guidance can turn the ‘creep’ into a decent person. For example trying to learn when it’s ok to touch someones arm. I’ve had women touch my arm and yet I find it difficult to know when exactly it’s ok to touch theirs. I… Read more »

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4 years ago

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ButtNugget

You missed the point. Women are not responsible to teach grown men how to act. Women do not owe anyone anything, let alone people making them uncomfortable. They especially don’t have to be nice or decent to someone causing them discomfort. It is a persons soul responsibility to treat others with respect, to acknowledge personal boundaries, and that it is not okay to continue to send someone messages after not receiving a response or similar such ‘blow offs’. Being socially awkward makes you hyper aware of when you’ve caused someone discomfort and there is zero guidance needed to see that.

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4 years ago

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JP

You missed the point. Women are not responsible to teach grown men how to act. Women do not owe anyone anything, let alone people making them uncomfortable. They especially don’t have to be nice or decent to someone causing them discomfort. It is a persons soul responsibility to treat others with respect, to acknowledge personal boundaries, and that it is not okay to continue to send someone messages after not receiving a response or similar such ‘blow offs’. Being socially awkward makes you hyper aware of when you’ve caused someone discomfort and there is zero guidance needed to see that.

On a one on one basis you are correct “people” (not just women, truly socially awkward people are awkward to everyone) are not responsible for teaching others how to act. BUT A lot of socially awkward people come from a background of neglect. That point in your life where you had a secure attachment to your parents and peers didn’t exist for the socially awkward. In the school of life these peoples teachers on how to act were a no-show, or if they did show up were either willfully neglectful or abusive. While it is definitely the socially awkward s… Read more »

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4 years ago

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lilbit

why “especially women”? Is it because women are better socially equipped than men are? Or is it because the majority of people being called creepers are men or is it because they majority of male creepers are ONLY creepers when it comes to women. Somehow they know how to treat other men’s boundaries with respect? There must be a reason why society needs this from women more than from men. Could that because women know how to respect other’s boudaries more than men do? Are men incapable of teaching others boundaries because they themselves can’t understand them? How many times… Read more »

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4 years ago

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FlyingKal

Newsflash!
You don’t have to break the law to get arrested. Or getting shot, for that matter…

Likewise (to run anlong with your analogy), you don’t have to touch a woman to get called a creep. You may, politely, ask her for a date. Or a dance. And sometimes just being in her vicinity is anough.
(Hetero as I am, i don’t ask men to dance or date me. But I’ve seen acquaintances of mine do it and it seems to work just fine, without insults involved.)